]]>It happens to the best of us, and usually at the worst times: Your iPhone (or your iPad or iPod touch) freezes up or iOS decides to go on a long weekend without you. Issues with the iPhone are particularly scary, because you can’t just reinstall the OS from your media and go on your merry way.

App issues

Clearing hung apps

Sometimes you get lucky and it’s just an app that’s frozen. If this happens, tap the home button to get back to your home screen, and then double-tap it to bring up the task bar. Press and hold on the troubled app to enter edit mode, then click the minus icon in the upper left. Confirm the app closure and try relaunching the app. Remember when Steve Jobs said, “if you need to use a task manager, you’re doing it wrong?” Well let’s just pretend the multi-tasking bar isn’t actually a task manager.

Reinstalling apps

Fortunately, iCloud makes reinstalling apps very easy. Delete the app that’s behaving badly by pressing and holding on the icon until it started shaking, then tap the X. Then, open the App Store app and go to Updates and then choose Purchases at the top. This will bring up a list of all the apps you’ve purchased. Find the app you want to reinstall, and press the cloud icon to the right of it. Enter your iTunes password and the app will be reinstalled. Make sure the app doesn’t contain data that isn’t backed up elsewhere; it could be lost in the reinstall process.

iPhone issues

Forcing a reboot

While Apple loves to say “it just works,” the truth is, sometimes it just doesn’t. An app might have totally locked up the iPhone, or the gerbil inside went on strike and won’t run on his miniature hamster wheel anymore. If that happens, your first recourse is to force the iPhone to reboot. To do this, press and hold the sleep/wake button for about three seconds and you’ll be prompted to reboot your iPhone. Then press and briefly hold the sleep/wake button to turn your iOS device back on. If you’re really stock, you might have to press and hold both the sleep/wake button and the home button for around 10 seconds to perform a hard reset.

It’s amazing how many issues this solves. Since iOS tries to do its best for memory management, I’ve found periodic reboots help keep things snappy.

Restoring the iOS via recovery mode

This is the iOS version of nuking from orbit. Things have gone so horribly wrong you need to wipe the device and start over. It may be because your device is constantly rebooting, an iOS update failed, or something just went haywire. To put your iPhone into recovery mode follow these steps:

Turn off the device as described above. Also, plug the iPhone’s USB cable into your computer, but don’t plug it into the device.

While pressing the home button, connect the USB cable to the dock connector. This will bring up the “Connect to iTunes” screen.

iTunes will launch and tell you the iPhone is in Recovery Mode and needs to be restored. Click Restore. Hopefully, this will bring your device back to full working order.

There is one gotcha with restores. Sometimes, your Home Screen folder layout is lost or incomplete. Dan Frakes over at Macworld wrote up a lengthy article on how to restore your Home Screen folders. The general idea is that if after a restore and sync, your Home Screen is still incorrect, do a restore from a current backup. This will re-apply your folders. Having run into this issue before, I can tell you the fix works great.

The future

iOS 5 promises to make recovering from system failures easier. With the new PC Free feature, if you do need to restore your iOS device, it can be done from an iCloud backup — assuming you’re on a Wi-Fi network. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this feature and report on how well it does, or doesn’t work, when the new iOS is released this fall.

]]>Updated. A bug in the Google Talk integration of Google+ can give users under some circumstances access to the IM contacts and conversations of other users on shared computers, making it possible to eavesdrop on chat sessions in real time. Google has acknowledged the issue and said it is working on a fix. The bug can also affect users with multiple Google accounts, which suggests Google+ may need some way of linking identities across accounts.

Google+ is offering its users the ability to have IM conversations through a Google Talk integration that’s very similar to the way the service is integrated within GMail. Part of that integration is regular contact with Google’s IM servers, which seems to be the core of this particular bug. Here’s how it works:

Let’s say Peter logs into GMail and Google+, then leaves both windows open on his computer. Peter’s Wi-Fi connection goes out for a minute, causing his Google Talk session within Google+ to lose sync and wait a few minutes to reconnect. Mary now borrows his computer, logs Peter out of GMail and logs into her own GMail account. The Google Talk session within Peter’s Google+ page finally decides it’s time to call home – and then automatically reconnects under Mary’s Google Talk account.

Mary logs out of her email, closes the browser window she used and hands the computer back to Peter. He’ll find now that he is still logged into Mary’s Google Talk account within his Google+ page. To make matters worse, any IM message Mary sends from a different device automatically gets relayed to Peter on his machine.

A Google spokesperson told me today that this looks like a rare bug that is currently being addressed. He also said that Google generally recommends to always log out of your Google account if you share a computer. However, this wouldn’t have helped Mary, since she dutifully logged out of GMail at the end of her session, unaware of the fact that her IM session persisted within Peter’s Google+ page.Correction: Turns out that logging out of your GMail account actually does force the Google Talk session to disconnect a few seconds later. However, Mary’s Google Talk session will persist if Mary simply closes her browser window and Peter uses another login screen instance to access his GMail account. In fact, Peter will be able to access both his and Mary’s Google Talk account simultaneously without still being logged into her GMail account.

To be fair, it’s unlikely that many people will run into this issue — even though it happened to me yesterday, resulting in some very confused IM exchanges between me and my wife’s work colleagues before we finally figured out what had happened. But a Google+ user has told us that the same has happened to him with his own multiple GMail accounts, suggesting that Google may have to find a way to unify multiple accounts under one Google+ identity.

It might be a good idea for Google to take the roll-out of enterprise access one step further, allowing people to link their personal and professional accounts under one Google+ identity. This would not only allow users to share content with contacts across their multiple Google accounts, but also simplify the discovery of Google+ users within the network, many of which now show up with multiple but separate Google accounts.

Update (08/11/2011): A Google spokesperson told me that the bug in question has since been fixed.

]]>“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” — Theodore Roosevelt

Most business experts believe that if you don’t fail, it means you’re not pushing yourself hard enough or taking enough risks. Thomas Edison said this about failure: “I haven’t failed, I’ve found 10,000 ways that don’t work.” He saw mistakes as a step toward to a solution.

In this “Tips from the Trenches” post, some experts share some of the mistakes that they’ve made, and what they’ve learned from them.

Early on in my career: Getting to be best buddies with people I was supervising. Until I had to let one of them go. THAT was a lesson. I work to keep better boundaries with folks who report to me by acting more like a resource for them, and not just a pal.

This is also a reason why it can be tricky promoting someone within a team to become the manager. It’s difficult to transition from colleague to boss.

I quit my first job with no regard for relationships. Never burn bridges. All your relationships should be for the long haul.

We’ve all been in situations that left us seething, and let our primitive fight-or-flight response take over. You never know who you will encounter again. Even if you don’t meet them again, those people might talk about your burning bridges to future prospects. Word of mouth is powerful and spreads fast.

Not everyone is a teacher. Find the ones who are willing to guide you and listen carefully.

We sometimes land in situations where we report to people who teach us nothing new, or don’t have good management skills. Rather than drifting along until that next job or gig, do what you can to keep learning and receiving guidance so you can be ready for the next step.

I worked several times for people I thought were crazy or dumb before I took a job, yet I went ahead and took it anyway. It turned out to be true every time leading to wasted years. Never again.

Many folks rely on gut instincts often because they turn out to be right. So if you get a gut feeling about new projects, clients and other situations, pay heed. I had a bad feeling about a prospective client, so I checked in with a colleague who had worked with her. It turned out those feelings were on target, so I passed on the gig.

]]>From time to time, I have shared with you the steps we’re taking to build Giga Omni Media, the 27-month-old company behind this and the other publications that make up the GigaOM network. Today, I am thrilled to announce the start of our company’s next phase.

We have just raised $4.5 million, led by new investor Alloy Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm with over $1 billion under management. True Ventures, our primary investors thus far, also participated in the round. The round was blessed by our angel investors, Rakesh Mathur, Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman as well. As part of the funding, Alloy Ventures general partner Ammar Hanafi will join the Giga Omni Media board.

We are going to use this new investment prudently, to enhance our technology platform and content offerings, add to our current portfolio of publications and expand our Events and Briefings businesses. We are in investing for the long-term — in ourselves.

I got to know Ammar when he was heading up corporate business development at Cisco Systems (read: V-P of the merger & acquisitions business.) As part of my job as a telecom reporter for Red Herring, I would hound him for information, often when there was none to be had. We stayed in touch periodically as our careers progressed before eventually losing touch.

Then earlier this summer, we reconnected through CEO Paul Walborsky. Our conversation quickly turned once again to my quest for clear and accurate information, but this time in relation to how I had made it the core quality around which our online media company was built. Soon we were discussing the possibility of Alloy becoming an investor.

The shift of audiences and ad dollars to online media from more traditional mediums has been significant on many levels, not least of which has been how it’s created opportunities for new models such as ours. What hasn’t changed is a desire on the part of business and technology audiences for in-depth, insightful coverage, which is what we are committed to providing.

Macro trends of our industry aside, the reason Alloy Ventures and True Ventures invested in our company is because there are lots of little things that need to happen before crazy ideas become a living, growing business. Sure we didn’t have an auspicious start to 2008, but we together overcame that little hiccup and my team has achieved a huge amount this year, among them:

We are now providing content to a number of prominent media sites, including CNNMoney.com, Businessweek.com and NYTimes.com.

As the company grows, I try to reflect on the job done so far and the road ahead. We have come so far on so little, mostly by being frugal and having a realist’s view of the world. The whiplash-inducing bad winds that are plaguing the overall economy will cast a pall on Silicon Valley in general and online media as well. So it’s nice to have the ability to grow even in the face of adversity, whether organically or through acquisitions. Before I go back to work, please join me in welcoming Ammar to our family.

More importantly, dear readers, please accept my extreme gratitude for your support — through good times and bad times, for without you it would not have been possible. Thank you.